BRITAIN CONFIDENT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 78, 12 January 1949, Page 3

BRITAIN CONFIDENT

INCREASED EXPORT OF COAL THIS YEAR LONDON, January 11. Britain is confident that her coal exports during 1949 will heat all postwar records, and greatly exceed last year’s figure ot 16,100,000 tons. The chairman of the National Coal Board (Lord Hyndley) says that the hoard, which administers Britain’s nationalised coal industry, is determined to do everything possible to reach the export target of 23,000,000 tons set in the European Economic Recovery Programme. The industry believes that it can sell abroad, without difficulty, all the hunker coal,«gas coal and coke it can produce. Lord Hyndley gave as his own personal target for the 1949 production of deep-mined coal, 215,000,000 tons, and his technical advisers are understood to consider this figure practicable. Lord Hyndley, expressing his disappointment at the failure to reach last year’s target of 200,000,000 tons (the output was 196,689,000 tons), asserted that concentration on improving the quality had cut the quantity, and robbed the miners of the full achievement. The National Coal Board is sending a team of experts into the mining areas in the next few weeks to see what can he done to improve the output and cut costs. The team will lie headed by Sir Epc Young, production member of the Goal Board .